Many manufacturing operations (e.g. the manufacture of aircraft) require the drilling of a large number of holes of varying sizes. Drill bits are used until they become dull and then they are resharpened. In a typical aircraft manufacturing plant, it is necessary to resharpen an extremely large number of drill bits each week. By way of example, approximately 30,000 general purpose quick-change drill bits are resharpened each week by The Boeing Company at a facility in Auburn, Wash.
A so-called "quick-change" drill bit is a type of drill bit which can be easily and quickly installed into and removed from the power drill with which it is used without it being necessary for the operator to loosen and tighten a chuck every time that a used drill is removed and a new drill is inserted. This type of drill bit has an adapter at its shank end which is larger in diameter than the rest of the drill bit. This type of drill bit is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,347,660, entitled Quick-Change Drill Assembly and Machine, and granted Sept. 7, 1982, to Michael R. Cannon, Robert L. Fuller, Jr. and Dwayne E. Proff. This patent is owned by The Boeing Company of Seattle, Wash.
One type of resharpening of a drill bit is referred to in the art as "pointing" or "repointing". This operation constitutes grinding a conical tip on the drill bit. A known drill bit point grinding machine includes a drill bit holder into which the drill bits are fed one at a time, by an operator. The operator must both hand load each drill bit into the holder and manually index the drill bit to a proper orientation relative to the grinding wheel. Following orientation, the operator actuates a switch which starts an automatic grinding cycle. Following completion of the cycle, the operator manually removes the drill bit from the drill bit holder. The present invention was developed for the purpose of eliminating these manual steps.